


Resourcefulness

by yikesola



Series: Commissions [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2011, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 19:34:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20452418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: Phil’s trying to calm down because he wants their stupid fight to be forgotten before bed. So they don’t fall asleep angry. So that anger doesn’t have to be directed anywhere— it can just go the hell away.A fic about socks and helium.





	Resourcefulness

**Author's Note:**

> This was a commissioned piece for [oriharakaoru](http://oriharakaoru.tumblr.com/) 💞  
Inspired loosely by this [tumblr post](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/187377463994/dragon-in-a-fez-sassykardashian-if-you-ever).

Phil is laying on his bed with his feet flat against the wall above his pillow, trying to calm down. Dan just chewed him out thirty minutes ago because of some socks he’d left in the lounge. Okay, three pairs. And okay, one was also in the kitchen. But like... he was gonna pick them up! He didn’t need Dan snipping at him, especially not over something so stupid. 

Sometimes Phil thinks Dan just wants to pick a fight. Just looks for things to get angry about. 

Then he thinks about it and realises that’s not quite right. Sometimes Dan is already angry, and he looks for things to direct that anger towards. If he can’t, it gets directed towards himself. 

Phil’s trying to calm down because he wants their stupid fight to be forgotten before bed. So they don’t fall asleep angry. So that anger doesn’t have to be directed anywhere— it can just go the hell away. 

He’s tired though, and part of him wonders if he should just hold onto the anger that Dan’s dropped into his lap like an unwelcome gift instead of bothering to do anything about it. But Phil knows this is something that’ll eat him up if he doesn’t solve it now. He knows he won’t get any sleep, he knows he and Dan will just spend all night stewing over this stupid fight that doesn’t mean anything at all. 

Better to have it out here and now. 

He glances over to the corner of the room and feels a spark of inspiration. He sits up and walks across their tiny flat. He knocks on Dan’s door. 

When Dan answers, standing before him with messy straightened fringe pushed to the side off his forehead and his _Cold Beer Hot Women_ t-shirt bright in Phil’s vision, Phil can feel the anger that is radiating off him. It’s strange and alien, not at all like Dan, he thinks. But also deeply embedded in a part of Dan that has existed long before Phil ever knew him. 

An anger that crops up when he’s most afraid. When he’s vulnerable. When he thinks he’s been seen, found out, caught. 

That’s what clues Phil into the fact that this isn’t actually about the messy flat at all. This is about bigger, scarier things. A video that was never meant to be seen by anyone but Dan, and which through bad luck and fickle technology found itself public almost two months ago. A phone call from his father last week, who is still unhappy with Dan’s decision to drop out of uni. Money, money, money— and how little of it YouTube is actually bringing in. So Dan yelled at him. Phil shouldn’t have been surprised. He wonders how he seriously spent the last half hour thinking a dumb habit like leaving his socks around the flat could actually cause a fight. A tiff maybe, even a squabble. But fights require heavier fodder. 

“Hey,” he says when he realises he hasn’t said anything. 

Dan’s frowning. “Hey.”

“I got an idea,” Phil says, unsure now if Dan will go for it. “Trust me, Howell?” 

Dan’s frown is gone. He’s not smiling, not yet, but it’s something. He nods.

He goes and lugs out the helium tank they’d used while filming the latest PINOF two nights ago. He sets it on the coffee table in front of Dan who has moved to the lounge and is staring at him confused. 

“Let’s fight about the stupid socks,” he says. Dan starts to shake his head but Phil goes on, “but we gotta breathe in helium and the first person to laugh loses.” 

Dan gets that crease in his deepest dimple that’s a result of him trying desperately not to smile. This idea has already done more to crack the tension of an angry Dan than Phil could have hoped for. He reaches up to check his fringe and nods. “Alright,” he says. 

Phil takes the first hit of helium from a bright orange balloon. He giggles and Dan giggles and they both agree it doesn’t count because the fight hasn’t started yet. They apply the same logic for when Dan takes his inhale and they both giggle again in their high pitched jumble. 

Then Phil gestures a _go on_ motion— fight start. Very official. Very regimented. 

“You’re so messy,” Dan says, the sound ridiculously high and his posh southern accent even more the caricature of an Englishman somehow in this pitch. Phil bites his bottom lip and swallows his laughter, just barely. 

“I’m not like, sloppy messy!” He insists, almost losing again because of his own silly voice. Not that Phil suggested this with any intention to win. Just to get Dan laughing. And he’s close, he can see it in Dan’s eyes. “I always mean to come back for the socks before I, y’know... forget about them.” 

“There’s so many places you can put your socks, Phil. On your feet or hamper or behind your headboard for all I care! But don’t just leave them out in the fucking open.” 

That breaks Phil— the juxtaposition of Dan’s swear and his goddamn chipmunk voice has Phil falling apart into laughter. Dan follows right behind him, laughing and saying, “I _mean_ it!” then laughing again because they could be reciting Shakespeare and it would still be hilarious in these helium-heightened voices. 

They barely lasted two minutes. Their shortest fight to date, and one Phil was plenty willing to lose. 

They go to bed happy that night, after Phil puts all his loose socks in the hamper and after he makes an apology bolognese and after Dan forgives him graciously with a kiss sloppier than any of Phil’s housekeeping habits. With not everything solved— especially not the bigger, scarier things that had built up Dan’s anger in the first place— but with the squeaky laughter still ringing in their ears and the comforting understanding that they’re on each other’s team. 

“You know we kill like a hundred brain cells every time we inhale helium like that, right?” Dan asks curled into Phil’s chest with his slowly unstraightening fringe tickling Phil’s chin. 

“Ah, oh well,” Phil lets out a light little laugh. “Not like we’re using them anyway.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/187377803554/resourcefulness) !


End file.
